JOAN OF ARC. 355 From this time her checkered career was rather of evil fortune than of good. If at St. Pierre-les-Moustiers the old enthusiasm made the forlorn hope imagine that it ascended the breach as easily as a broad stairway, the siege of La Charite, to which it was a preliminary, proved disastrous, and again Joan averred that she had undertaken this without orders from her Voices. It was freely said that La Tremouille had sent her on the enterprise with insufficient forces and had withheld the requisite succors. During the winter she was at Lagny, where occurred a little incident which was subsequently used to confirm the charge of sorcery. A child was born apparently dead ; the parents, dreading to have it buried without baptism, had it carried to the church, where it lay, to all appearance, lifeless for three days; the young girls of the town assembled in the church to pray for it, and Joan joined them. Suddenly the infant gave signs of life, gaped thrice, was hurriedly baptized, died, and was buried in consecrated ground, and Joan had the credit of working a miracle, to be turned sub- sequently to her disadvantage. Probably about the same time, there was trouble about a horse of the Bishop of Senlis, which Joan took for her own use. She found it worthless for her pur- poses and sent it back to him, and also caused him to be paid two hundred saluts d'or for it (the salut d'or was equivalent to twenty- two sols parisis), but on her trial the matter was gravely charged against her, showing how eagerly every incident in her career was scrutinized and utilized.* As the spring of 1430 opened, the Duke of Burgundy came to the assistance of his English allies by raising a large army for the recovery of Compiegne. The activity of Joan was unabated. During Easter week, about the middle of April, we hear of her in» the trenches at Melun, where her Voices announced to her that she would be a prisoner before St. John's day, but would give her no further particulars. Before the close of the month she at- tacked the advancing Burgundians at Pont-l'£veque, with her old let, II. 66-70.— Journal (Tun Bourgeois de Paris, an 1429.— Proces, pp. 486, 490.— MSinoires de Saiut-Remy, ch. 152. — Buchon, pp. 524, 539.
- Gorres, pp. 292-5.— Jean Chartier, pp. 39-40.— Jean le Bouvier, p. 381. —
Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles de Charles VII.— Buchon, p. 544.— Proces, pp. 480, 488, 400.
